Sept. 12, 2022

Angela Masching: Understanding Corporate Governance

Angela Masching: Understanding Corporate Governance

In this episode, Sarah Tenisi speaks with Angela Masching. Her expertise lies in building scalable, successful, sellable businesses, with a particular passion for high-growth organizations and transformative global impact.

Angela has held various corporate governance roles and has a wealth of experience on what it takes to make a company successful.

Listen in as Angela unpacks the idea that everyone has a boss, no matter one’s role in an organization. She discusses the four major stakeholder groups that make up the governance chain in your typical small-to-midsize company.

Angela explains how to decide whether to hire a COO, or to put together a Board of Directors. She gives her thoughts on how executive leadership can best work alongside the Board, how CEOs and COOs of differing personalities and strengths can create a productive relationship, and her crisis management tips should major disagreements flare up among the leadership team.

She also speaks on the drastic cultural changes taking place across many organizations to this day as a result of the pandemic, and how leaders can cultivate a powerful company culture in spite of the turbulence in today’s economy.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

●      [01:52] The various players in the governance chain

●      [04:04] Deciding when to hire a COO

●      [06:32] The role of the Board of Directors and how to construct one

●      [11:50] How the Board of Directors work with executive leadership

●      [15:25] Respecting the scope of your work depending on your role

●      [19:34] Core leadership principles to avoid or minimize conflict

●      [23:43] The importance of having a system to fall back on

●      [25:41] Leading by example and building a great company culture

●      [28:49] The rise of the collaborative company culture

●      [32:49] How technology has changed corporate culture

●      [37:14] What’s next for Angela

●      [39:18] The different types of CEOs and COOs and how they work together


Key quotes:

●      “You want to be careful and thoughtful about whether you need a Board of Directors or whether you just want an advisory board. You can get that compliance expertise through an advisory board or through your professional network without giving away control of your company.”

●      “Comfort with failure and comfort with agility are two key skills. You have to have them on the Board of a startup just as you have to have them on the engineering team.”

●      “One of the ways we can build that culture of psychological safety is by checking our own ego as a leader. Failure happens. Accepting failure gracefully has to be a part of your culture when you’re growing a company, no matter its size.”

●      “It’s really hard for leadership to set the culture. Culture comes from the team; it comes from the ground-up; it is a grassroots thing; it is organic. But leadership can mess up a culture if they don’t respect it nor embody its values.”